Dirty ol' coop

[farmerpookie]

I've recently moved to a small acreage with a chicken coop already on the property. It's was already livable and I now have 25 hens but the walls and ceiling are dusty and covered in cobwebs. I know chickens would prefer a clean home but I'm unsure of the best way to clean up. It's made of raw wood so I don't want to use anything that will damage it or be unhealthy for the chickens.

 

[aart]

Chickens are dusty anyway, I'm sure it doesn't bother them much....
......I wouldn't worry about it, especially now the chickens are already in residence.

If anything, I would have used a shop vac to suck up as much dust and cobwebs as possible before installing the chickens. You might still do that, tho I'd slowly acclimate them to the noise of the vacuum, it'll freak them out at first but they get used to such things pretty quickly...as I learned with the lawn mower.

I wouldn't use any 'wet' cleaners, wet and dust makes mud....and moisture in the chicken coop is not a good idea, you want everything to stay as dry as possible in the coop.

 

[Ridgerunner]

How do you know chickens prefer a clean home? Mine prefer to drink water from the ground instead of out of a clean waterer. When given a choice mine seem to prefer muddy water. They take dust baths. Most of that dust you are seeing in there probably came from the previous chickens scratching the floor or from their dander unless it has been empty a very long time.

It sounds like it’s a pretty big coop. Vacuuming it or knocking that stuff down with a broom (wear a dust mask) will make it more pleasant for you to be in there but I really doubt the chickens will be all that impressed. People normally care a lot more about this kind of stuff than the chickens do. For what it’s worth I do occasionally knock spider webs down and rearrange some dust because it does matter to me. I’m important too.

It sounds like you found a real nice situation with that coop already there. Wish I’d had a situation like that when I moved here. That would have saved me a lot of work. Some people may worry that you did not sanitize that coop before you moved chickens in it, worried that they may catch some disease or get a parasite infestation. It depends on how long that coop has been empty of chickens as to how much the risk really is and sanitizing it would have been a reasonable thing to do, but in reality about anything in the coop is probably in the ground around them anyway. The risk would still be there no matter how much sanitizing you did. I don’t want to get you to worrying too much about diseases or parasites because I don’t consider the risk all that high but just like you should do anytime you introduce chickens to a new piece of ground, watch for signs of problems. I only mention this to try to stop someone from freaking you out about not sanitizing it first. It helps reduce the risk but not really that much. In most of the situations like yours it would not really matter at all. If you were bringing a used coop into an area where the chickens had not been before, yes definitely sanitize the coop.

Good luck and enjoy your chickens. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Not cleaning that coop first is pretty small to me.

 

[farmerpookie]

Okay that's guys! Good to know! I won't worry to much about it then